Rebecca Mary — Themes and Context

“Well, Rebecca Mary Plummer, you came to fetch my answer, did you? You got your stent 'most done?” Aunt Olivia's hands were extended for the folded sheet.

“I've got it DONE, Aunt 'Livia,” answered little Rebecca Mary, steadily. Her slender figure, in its quaint, scant dress, looked braced as if to meet a shock. But Rebecca Mary was terribly afraid.

“Every mite o' that seam? Then I guess you can't have done it very well; that's what I guess! If it ain't done well, you'll have to take it—”

“Wait—please, won't you wait, Aunt 'Livia? I've got to say something. I mean, I've got all the over-'n'-overing I'm ever going to do done. THAT'S what's done. The hundred-and-oneth stitch was my stent, and it's done. I'm not ever going to take the hundred and twoth. I've decided.”

Understanding filtered drop by drop into Aunt Olivia's bewildered brain. She gasped at the final drop.

“Not ever going to take another stitch?” she repeated, with a calmness that was awfuler than storm.

“May I ask when this—this state of mind began?”

Rebecca Mary girded herself afresh. She had such need of recruiting strength.

“It's been coming on,” she said. “I've felt it. I knew all the time it was a-coming—and then it came.”

It seemed to be all there. Why must she say any more? But still Aunt Olivia waited, and Rebecca Mary read grim displeasure in capitals across the gray field of her face. The little figure stiffened more and more.

“I've over-'n'-overed 'leven sheets,” the steady little voice went on, because Aunt Olivia was waiting, and it must, “and you said I did 'em pretty well. I tried to. I was going to do the other one well, till you said there was going to be another dozen. I couldn't BEAR another dozen, Aunt Olivia, so I decided to stop. When Thomas Jefferson crowed I sewed the hundred-and-oneth stitch. That's all there's ever a-going to be.”

Rebecca Mary stepped back a step or two, as if finishing a speech and retiring from her audience. There was even the effect of a bow in the sudden collapse of the stiff little body. It was Aunt Olivia's turn now to respond—and Aunt Olivia responded:

“You've had your say; now I'll have mine. Listen to me, Rebecca Mary Plummer! Here's this sheet, and here's this needle in it. When you get good and ready you can go on sewing. You won't have anything to eat till you do. I've got through.”

The grim figure swept right-about face and tramped into the house as though to the battle-roll of drums. Rebecca Mary stayed behind, face to face with her fate.

“She's a Plummer, so it'll be SO,” Rebecca Mary thought, with the dull little thud of a weight falling into her heart. Rebecca Mary was a Plummer too, but she did not think of that, unless the un-swerving determination in her stout little heart was the unconscious recognition of it.

“I wonder”—her gaze wandered out towards the currant-bushes and came to rest absently on Thomas Jefferson's big, white bulk—“I wonder if it hurts very much.” She meant, to starve. A long vista of food-less days opened before her, and in their contemplation the weight in her heart grew very heavy indeed.

“We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond of layer- cake,” Rebecca Mary sighed, “I suppose, though, after a few weeks”—she shuddered—“I shall be glad to have ANYTHING—just common things, like crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to eat a—horse. I've heard of folks—You get very unparticular when you're starving.”

It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past. She could hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up to a window. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the table. It looked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top.

“There's strawberry jam in between it,” mused Rebecca Mary, regretfully. “I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if it was apple jelly.” But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to eat with Aunt Olivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond Rebecca Mary was of honey!

Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell in long, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as usual, and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the other stitch that lay between her and supper.

“She's a Plummer,” sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her own Plummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each recognized only the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers!